Deceptions (20 page)

Jean rang one night from her mobile phone and told me to be ready in fifteen minutes. I met her outside my apartment. When I opened the car door her face, in the overhead light, was tense with exhaustion. I thought of her snobbery and acquired wealth, balancing it against the vulnerability I could see in her defeated shoulders. She refused to answer my questions as she drove along the quays.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” she warned. “Just settle back and enjoy the ride. This is your territory.” She drove deeper into the side streets adjoining the docklands and braked outside a house with boarded-up windows. A favourite haunt, she said. She’d been there before with Terence, persuading Killian, bullying him, pleading with him to return home. She gripped my hand as she banged on the front door. Suddenly, we were parents together, staring into a terrifying vista. The years in between, the ugly struggles and petty manoeuvrings counted for nothing. It was a momentary ceasefire that could not last but, as we waited for someone to open the door, it was comforting.

Killian’s body, wrapped in a sleeping-bag, was pressed tightly against the wall. Candles guttered in plastic containers. A gas ring hissed blue flame. The smell of a meat stew rising from a saucepan was surprisingly appetising. Bozo Daly sat down on a sagging armchair and lifted a bottle of cheap whiskey from the window ledge. He held the bottle towards Jean. It was obvious they’d met before. She shook her head and pulled the hood of the sleeping-bag from our son’s face. I was shocked by his pallor. He looked so young and defenceless in sleep, his eyelids hiding the hard, focused stare I’d learned to dread. As if my thoughts had entered his dreams he opened his eyes. With the ease of a snake shedding old skin, he slid from his sleeping-bag and demanded money. He cursed us when we refused, forced Jean away when she tried to prevent him leaving the squat.

“You wanted him.” She turned towards me. “He’s yours. You keep claiming you have all the answers, demanding he move in with you. See if you can do any better. I’ve nothing left to give him.” Her grief had an ugly, helpless sound. Tears ran down her cheeks. She made no effort to wipe them away. “This is where you’ll find him when he runs away again.”

Our son was seventeen years of age. He’d moved from Laurel Heights to an inner-city squat in a seamless journey while I sat idly by and wrote the script.

I soon became familiar with the pattern: his sudden disappearances, the lies, the missing money, the promises so quickly broken. I followed him into the streets. We walked beneath dangerous walls where his friends gathered. The blank stare, the menacing stance, I was familiar with it all. Graffiti was sprayed across the wall – cryptic messages, abusive threats, pleas to be fucked, shagged, screwed, an incongruous heart entwining Decco and Anita’s undying love, and the not-so-cryptic demands, “Brits Out” and “Up the Provos”. Someone had dumped a fridge against the wall. A burned-out car was a rusting hulk beside it. They called Killian Ferryman, those friends he made, those street-wise young men with their thin faces and hard eyes. Ferryman was a nickname with impact and power, capable of carrying travellers over dangerous waters. But I watched my son fade behind it until he was simply another lost face hanging around the quays. We tried again – and again. He begged my forgiveness, asked for one more chance. Over the next year, I clung to an emotional pendulum that veered between optimism and despair.

Once more, he agreed to enter rehabilitation. It was after midnight when I received a phone call. Killian had left of his own accord. I didn’t find him that night or the following one. I called to the Garda station and reported him missing. The guard on duty was bleary-eyed, impatient, uninterested when he heard Killian had walked voluntarily from the centre. Free will. He shrugged and scratched his head with a pen, his mind moving on to the next event, a city-centre knifing, perhaps, or a domestic brawl behind lace curtains.

I drove to the squat but there was no sign of him. A woman arrived while I was there and left a bag of groceries on the floor for Bozo. We walked outside and stood under a tree which had grown from a crack in the cement. The branches cast wounded shadows over the lager cans, whiskey bottles and mouldering food cartons at its base.

“You his da?” she enquired and shook her head ruefully when I nodded. “Kids! They break your heart when they’re under your feet and break it twice as hard when they scarper.” A denim mini-skirt rode high above her thighs and her solid legs were squashed into knee-high silver boots. “He’s a hard act to handle, your lad. If he were mine I’d lock him up and feck the key into the Liffey. He’s a goner if you don’t.”

She lit a cigarette. Her tough red face was silhouetted for an instant in flame. Her lipstick was purple, glossy. I suddenly remembered my mother painting her lips, the tube delicately balanced in her hand as she opened her mouth then lightly patted her lips on a white tissue. It must have been shortly before her death. The tissue was still on her dressing table after her funeral.

Killian came home eventually, as he always did, moving between my apartment and Laurel Heights and back to the centre of nowhere. My stereo and television set were stolen, money was taken from my pockets while I slept. For the first time the words “tough love” were mentioned. When all else fails tough love is the only option, said the counsellor. He was young and idealistic, a text-book talking. Tough love – such a convenient category. Not harsh like banishment. No, love was my prime motivation when I told my son to go. He’d broken every promise he made to me and broken my heart in the process.

I met Bozo Daly the following afternoon on Custom House Quay. He sat on a bench studying the flow of the river, his chin thrust downwards towards his chest, a bottle by his side. His age was indefinable, his face creased like a chamois on which the world had wiped its indifference. We crossed the bridge and headed for a sandwich bar. He walked with a shuffling gait, as if he was pushing paper with his feet. His hair was the colour of dead grass.

Ferryman is a good kid, he told me. A bit wild but he’d settle down soon enough. He could have been consoling a disappointed parent at a school meeting.

“He’s a thief and a drug addict,” I replied. “Apart from that I know nothing about my son.”

“F-ferryman doesn’t b-b-belong on the streets.” I heard a quick exhalation of breath before the words rushed from him, as if somewhere, in another life, he had acquired self-help techniques he still remembered. Some people choose it, he said, others have it thrust upon them.

“Killian has choices. He’s fucked up every one of them.” My anger, never far below the surface, was a zigzag of lightning. At times, I hated my son. How hard those words look on paper. But I write them as unflinchingly as I write about love. They are opposite sides of a damaged coin.

Bozo said he’d seen too many troubled lads not to know the difference between the hard cases and the ones who had simply lost their way. I asked him where he got his degree in family psychology and he smiled, displaying stumpy yellow teeth.

“1976. F-first class fu-fu-cking honours.” His laughter was a shield against my disbelief.

I wondered for the first time about his story, the road that brought him to a derelict squat and a ridiculous nickname. I ordered soup and baguettes. On high stools we sat together, our faces to the wall. He asked about my work. Killian had told him I wrote drama. His eyes glazed when I mentioned
Nowhere Lodge
. He’d never seen it, hardly a surprising discovery. He did, however, display a flicker of interest when I mentioned
Regards to Aunt Anna
. Vaguely he remembered something – he forced his mind back to a forgotten time – then shook his head, no longer interested. He promised to watch out for Killian. An odd choice of guardian – but needs must. We agreed a payment. He would get in touch with me at the first sign of trouble. Trouble is a relative term and my understanding of what constituted ‘trouble’ had changed radically. After a short while he grew jittery and left, having pocketed his first payment with an indifferent nod of thanks. He was going in one direction only but, at least, he knew where to find the nearest off-licence. Where Killian had travelled was impossible to imagine.

Perhaps it could have worked. Killian phoned regularly, talked about methadone programmes and rehabilitation. A new beginning, old routines. I’d had the same conversation too many times to feel anything other than weariness over having to parrot the familiar responses. But there was always the desperate belief that this time … this time … things would be different.

He rang late one night, sounding distraught, and asked me to meet him. His clothes were still in good condition, a bulky puffa jacket and jeans, strong trainers, but his hair was lank, unwashed, and his face spotted, some of the pimples turning into sores. Spittle had dried on his mouth. Every part of me cried out to take him home but I was holding out, following the dictates of tough love.

He was living with friends in the inner city. Rented accommodation, he needed money. The landlord was a shit, demanding an exorbitant deposit. It was obvious he was lying. His sing-song voice, the pat answers, the ever-shifting gaze, his sudden outburst of fury when I shook my head.

“Fuck you … you’re my father. You want to see me lying on the edge of the road, is that what you want? This is a chance to make it back. It’s the least you can do seeing as how you kicked me out.”

This meeting was no different to the others. In the past I’d given in, handing over the money in the belief that it would give him a roof over his head. My anger carried me swiftly into the night. I did not turn around when he called my name. It was the last time we spoke.

What did you do this week? Not playing bloody rugby again! Jesus Christ! Is he trying to turn you into a clone?

He left me Killian! He never wanted you! Never – wanted – you!

Ferryman is my name. Nicer than Killian. Too many Killians …

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
OUR

In New York, Lorraine stares at an obscene gap on the skyline. Photographs of lost faces flutter from walls and railings. Standing close to where it happened, just breathing in the stultifying air, brings home to her the enormity of what has occurred more than the most horrifying television images which had reduced the collapse of the Twin Towers to a tormented, iconic image of a billowing curtsy. Two months have passed since September 11 and the city still vibrates with shock. A new vocabulary is being created. War on Terror. Axis of Evil. Global Terrorism.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, life grimly continues. Sally Jones has persuaded Lorraine to stay in her loft apartment for five days. They have been friends since they worked in the artists’ co-operative and keep regular contact with each other through e-mail. Sally has organised a workshop on metaphysical art and believes Lorraine’s work will benefit from participating in it. The challenge of being analysed and criticised, of having to justify and defend her work-in-progress, appeals to Lorraine but her main reason for making the trip is to be with Sally. She was the first person Lorraine tried to contact when news of the attack came through. The phone in her apartment rang out and it took two days before an e-mail from Sally arrived to her friends, assuring them that she was still alive. She had been swept along in the debris of the attack, had wandered through parks where candles flamed and people gathered to comfort and calm each other. She plans to return to Ireland in the spring and set up an artists’ colony in a remote Wicklow location.

The workshops are as stimulating as she promised. Lorraine finds herself caught up in debates on surrealism, the power of the absurd and the enigmatic dream. The artists break early on the last day and arrange to meet in a nearby bar for a farewell drink. Later that night, she and Sally will attend a piano recital by Eoin Ruane and meet beforehand with Meg for a meal. She finds a quiet spot in the bar and phones home. She leaves a message when the land line rings out but, when she calls Emily’s mobile, her daughter answers immediately.

“I’m sleeping overnight with Sharon,” she announces. “We’re watching
Home and Away
. Dad’s on a business trip. How’s it going with you?”

“Fine. Where is he?” Adrian had not mentioned any impending business trip.

“It’s some big deal he’s doing. I think he said Cork.”

“I thought his car was being serviced.”

“He took yours. Anyway, he’s back tomorrow. Miss you, Mum.” From her tone it is obvious she wants to turn her attention back to the television.

On his mobile, Adrian speaks so softly she has difficulty hearing him. He is dining with a client and promises to ring her later. She is unable to hear cutlery clinking or the murmur of voices in the background. The only sound that penetrates is his guarded tone and the click of a door closing.

Two bodies writhing on an old battered sofa. The image is so instantaneous that her breath thickens and she is forced to suck deep into her lungs. Suddenly she needs to speak to Virginia. Virginia is the only person who can calm her down.